Worcester Peace Train

I mentioned Deon Snyman and the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process in my last post. At the "Engaging The Other" conference in early December he talked about a whole group of survivors of the Worcester Shoprite bombing planning to visit one of the perpetrators, Stefaans Coetzee, in prison in Pretoria. Well, they didn't waste any time!

Sarah Crawford-Browne writes:

"Deon is on an incredible journey with 40 survivors of the Worcester bomb - 24 Dec 1996. They left this morning (29 Jan 2013) on a Peace Train to go from Worcester to Pretoria to meet one of the perpetrators.  I'm putting up the updates on the Restitution Foundation Facebook page as they travel.    And we invite you to join the Peace Train -- there's an event on the page... or to share a posting so it does go viral and strengthens the hope in our country!  This is a partnership between the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process (they called Deon the father of WHRP today!) and Khulumani. 

This newspaper article shares a little of the story...  - as does a video about Ms Olga Macingwane who was the first to make the journey in 2009, following which other survivors requested the opportunity to meet Stefaans. 

Engaging the Other

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

We don't often read or hear Good News in South Africa these days. So the conference I attended at the University of the Free State (UFS) in early December made a welcome dent in the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism. Engaging the Other: Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition - the third of the post-TRC conferences organized by Professor of Psychology, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela since 2006 - brought together stories of transcending violent histories from all over the world. It was at the first of these conferences that many of us were deeply moved by the presentation from the German psychoanalysts of PAKH who are the second-generation offspring of survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. It was also then that David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew, performed his extraordinary autobiographical play about "Making Peace with Gaddafi".

Jonathan Jansen

Six years later, Pumla has moved to Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein) as have quite a few Cape Town academics drawn by the charisma and transformational energy of Jonathan Jansen, the Rector, who was appointed when UFS was rocked by a racist scandal in 2008. Three stories from South Africa impressed me.

The University of the Free State
The first undoubtedly was the story of UFS itself and what Jansen has been able to create in 3 years.